Robert H. Jackson

Robert Houghwout Jackson was born on 13 February 1892 in Spring Creek Township, Pennsylvania, and grew up in western New York. He never finished college; after a year at Albany Law School he learned law as an apprentice and practised in Jamestown, New York, for twenty years. Joining the Roosevelt administration in 1934, he rose to become Solicitor General in 1938 and Attorney General in 1940. In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court. His opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) protected schoolchildren who refused on religious grounds to salute the flag. He dissented in Korematsu (1944), which upheld the removal of Japanese Americans, and his concurrence in the Steel Seizure Case (1952) still guides thinking about presidential power. In 1945 President Truman asked him to lead the American prosecution of the major Nazi war criminals. Jackson helped write the charter of the International Military Tribunal, and on 21 November 1945 he opened the trial at Nuremberg, insisting that the defeated leaders receive a fair trial under law rather than vengeance. He returned to the Court and died on 9 October 1954.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Raphael Lemkin · Eleanor Roosevelt · Franklin D. Roosevelt